Category Archives: faith

American culture, American People., Culture, faith, family, Life, Logic, motivation, philosphy, pop culture, psychology, Society & Culture, Sports, Uncategorized

We Hope for Baseball

Image result for baseball

The collective emotional roller coaster our homes, communities, states, nations and world have experience over the past week cannot be quantified with words.

But damn if it’s not like me to try. Leave it to a pandemic for me to sit down and type my first entry in so long I cannot recall.

The world around us moved so fast last Wednesday that it seemed unreal. The NBA was suspending its season?

Huh.

Thursday saw universities shuttered, college basketball conference tournaments cancelled, high schools move to eLearning.

Um, what?

Friday felt like the bottom fell out, the cancellation of the NCAA Tournament, a new kind of March Madness. Spring sports cancelled – including the College World Series in June – throwing eligibility questions and team rosters for the 2020-21 season into a quagmire that didn’t feel so giggity giggity.

And we thought the news was all filled with doom and gloom before?

I told my wife Friday afternoon that my brain hurt. I couldn’t comprehend much more that day, think of any more angles to cover or next steps after the next steps. I needed wine tequila and a hoodie.

2020 will be forever remembered as when “Social Distancing” became apart of the American lexicon, when everyone from the age of two to 92 could recite proper hand washing protocols.

It will be remembered when we learned everything in our economy is connected, that an essential freeze halted us in our tracks. We quarantined, we worked from home. We overreacted, we under-reacted.

We hoarded toilet paper.

Everything has effectively been put on hold. Youth sports, book clubs. Going out to dinner, a family cookout with grandparents. Spring break. Every Disney Park closed for weeks, every zoo and museum closed. No choir concerts, no parades, no church in person, no events really of any kind.

Everything. Has. Stopped.

But have we learned?

Nothing we didn’t already know.

That faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us, and while the greatest is love, the most important might be hope.

We need to hope we can get back to normal before July. Before June.

We’re holding out hope for high school baseball in our home state. My son, a senior, is a part of a team that won a state championship last season. His friends from his travel teams, scattered across the state, all want the chance to play before college. Most won’t get a chance to play in college, but it is not about that specifically.

It’s about Senior Night. It’s about Prom. It’s about hearing your name called for the final time. Crossing the stage with a diploma at graduation and graduation parties of definitely more than 10 people.

It’s about all we’ve taken for granted. The commute to work filled with podcasts that have fresh content about sports, movies, politics, whatever. Seeing our co-workers, sitting face-to-face in meetings, teaching in a classroom filled with people.

It’s been merely a week, and even the introverts like me don’t think we really understood how significant social distancing could be to the fabric of what it is to be American.

Maybe this is a chance to re-learn, to re-think the daily life and throw our routines out of whack. Are we adaptable? Are we unbeatable? Can we turn a negative, a 100 negatives, into a positive? Are we just catch phrases, or can we rise to the challenge and endure?

We’re always taking about how busy we are (I’m looking at, well, all of us).

Well, how about now? Time to read. Time to listen. Time to think. To take a walk. To get to know our spouses and kids again. To find a way to serve a purpose greater than ourselves.

Maybe this is our wake-up call.

What is truly important, and what is not.

Sure, we’ve clung tight to family. Personally, we haven’t turned into The Shining family around here…yet. And we appreciate our home, our jobs, our friends and our freedoms.

But hope, man.

Hope might be the most fascinatingly human emotion there has ever been. And we need it more than ever.

No matter your beliefs, your political allegiances, whether you call this a hoax or are digging your doomsday bunker as I type, this is history happening for better of worse in real time.

It is a stark reminder we are not in control, not even a little bit, not even at all. But like any good book or movie (that we’ve all probably re-watched or re-read three times by now), hope is a good thing.

It could be the hope we’ll stop losing our ever-loving minds. Hope that those who aren’t taking it serious will wake up to the fact that COVID-19 is a bit more threatening than we thought a week ago, or even a day ago.

Hope is why Hallmark is running Christmas movies in March. It’s why Disney+ put Frozen II up months before they were supposed to. It is why classic sports re-runs are a welcome distraction. Why Tom Brady going to Tampa Bay and leaving New England was something else to talk about for a few hours.

Because we do not know where this going. We do not know the impact on the economy, on our jobs, on our daily lives yet. And we won’t fully for some time.

But we hope.

We hope for the sick, we hope for the cure, for strong leadership, for our friends, for our industries, for our kids.

We hope for an appreciation of the life we lived two weeks ago and for a future that might be close to it.

So, yes, we hope for baseball in this house. And we hold out that hope, because without it, well, it just makes the brain hurt.

Stay safe. Stay informed. Stay good to each other.

Stay hopeful.

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belief, Culture, faith, family, Philosophy

A Bit Childish

It happened again today. In fact, it nearly happens every day.

Someone said it.

“You have FOUR kids?”

I might not ever get used to my reaction to their response, which usually consists of a mix of sarcasm, wit, a nervous laugh or a simple, “yep.”

No matter, it happens all the same. One day it might be the visitor to my office at work, noticing my family photo and asking, “are they all yours?”

our familyNah. I just liked the frame.

For a while, I used to think it was because we were younger and I took it as a compliment. For a bit of time, I was slightly embarrassed. Not of my family, or how many of us are there, but the implication that we’re not normal, or that the world thinks that’s too many kids.

We see or hear it everywhere.

At the grocery store checkout line, when three gallons of milk hit the counter, five quarts of strawberries, two loafs of bread and quantities of goods some families would not use for a month, the clerk just glances at me like I must be throwing a party.

I am, lady. Every night at the kitchen table. You should see bedtime. It’s like a rave.

Nowadays, I just feel bad though.

Oh no, not about us.

I feel bad for those who think that 1) there is a set amount of children that bring happiness and 2) they should certainly voice their opinion in not so subtle ways that lets me know they think my wife and I should have a lobotomy before having another baby.

We may be crazy, but the amount of children that comprise our family has very little to do with our sanity level, frankly.

People boldly ask if we are having anymore: “You guys are done, right?”

But if what was actually being thought was said, it would sound like this: “You can’t possibly want ANOTHER kid? What are you, insane? Why would you do that to yourselves?”

When my wife and I had our youngest a few years back, people wondered if we were trying or if it was an accident.

Um, what’s the difference again?

As someone else recently said in a blog, there is no more or less value to a child that is planned than one that is not.

This stigma that all “normal” families come in twos, one of each gender is a notion that prevents spontaneity and frankly, a true enjoyment of life.

Those that know me know how meticulously I clean and pick-up (even when dinner is still happening). So why would I bring more children into our home to add more cleaning and picking up to my already troublesome synapse that won’t allow me to let it all sit?

Because, it was never my decision to begin with.

Something greater than I put me on a path to meet my wife, for her to already have an 18-month old that I would come to treasure and raise exactly as if he were biologically mine. And something beyond human control decided my wife and I would have the children we have when we had them.

There are many in life that want children and cannot, for a variety of reasons, have them. This is whom I think of when I feel my face turning a little red upon the insinuation we’ve done something weird.

I do not think any of us know what normal is, anyway. We all come from families with diverse and wide-ranging backgrounds, with different beliefs. A wide-collection of blended families, second marriages, steps, in-laws and all the like. yet somehow we end up worried about sleepless nights? You pulled all nighters in college! Dirty clothes? Do you remember how your socks smelled after a ball game as a teenager? Worried about the cost of college? You didn’t mind dropping down money for a guy’s trip to Vegas or a girls shopping weekend in New York.

And I finally reached the point a while ago where I just stopped caring and ignored it. If the need to validate your own decisions comes from a condescending remark to someone you do not know, have at it, hoss.

Just submit your question and you can choose from one of my canned responses:

  • I do not know what I am doing “big picture”
  • I am aware of how much college costs nowadays and we’ll figure it out when the time comes
  • The youngest does indeed have red hair. You may be surprised, but my wife and I have known for some time. You have this many kids and you don’t know what’s coming out.
  • We may or may not have more children. I do not know because my DeLorean is in the shop (something wrong with the flux capacitor).
  • No, they are all different, you know, like you are. So no, that one doesn’t like ketchup, she isn’t a huge fan of onions, that one over there took a little longer to learn to read. In the end, I trust they will manage all the same.

The question we often get is why? Why so many? Why would you put yourself through that kind of running around? Why would you go to Disney World eight years in a row? That’s not a vacation! That’s torture. How can you run around all the time to various events? Aren’t you always cleaning up the kitchen?

Because look at them. They are magnificent. They are filled with wonder. They may each do something really awesome in this world. It might be because we took them to Disney for eight years in a row. It might be because they shared time together and with us.

Because why not?

Because this is normal to us. Because I don’t know what to do when I’m not counting heads. Because the peace and quiet are overrated. Because I act like a kid, it makes it more acceptable to play with their toys and games if they are mine. Because I love my wife. Because I cannot imagine life without each one of them. Because they were meant to be here. Because I like to give advice. Because it’s better to share in their joy and accomplishments than my own. Because they are funny. Because.

It was never our decision to begin with.

As is often the case in life, it’s your perspective that shapes it more than anything. If you think you’d be too tired to care for a large family, to provide them each with individual love and time, as well as a group, then you are right. If you think it’s too much of a burden on your plans, then you are right.

But for us, this was our plan: We have no plan.

We think the same thing we did 10 years ago. My wife and I love one another, our children and we will see where that takes us.

So far, this has been one hell of a trip.

We just needed more car seats than most along the way.

Sorry we’re not sorry. It’s normal to us because something allows us to handle it and cannot allow others to understand it.

As I said, it was not a decision.

It never will be.

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12.21.12, 2012, Dec 21, faith, The Meaning of Life

It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Don’t Feel Fine)


We’re nearly there.
Dec. 21, 2012.
The supposed date the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world. The date that many (non-mainstream) scholars say that something biblical might happen. A day which might be the dawn of a new era.
So we’ve had movies made about this date. People have joked about this date – my favorite was the joke that Hostess was in on the end of the world, which is why we briefly lost Twinkies and Ho-Hos. Some people are secretly fearful of this date, they just don’t want to admit it.
Despite the fact that no credible scientists, astronomers, historians or scholars support the theory of the world coming to an end next Friday (no, really, anyone with any credibility calls it hogwash), let’s play the game: let’s say it happens.
Are you ready?
Are you ready to meet your maker? Did you do everything you want? Have you lived life to its absolute fullest? I doubt it. I certainly have not. Because we rarely reach 100 percent. We talk of giving 110 percent, but really, we never approach it. There is always more that can be done or given.
As humans, we operate under the assumption that there is always time. It may be finite in the sense we know that we are going to die, but we don’t know when that will be and we always perceive it to be in the distant future. If we’re 10, it’s something like 1,000 years away.
At 20, we think we’re barely a quarter of the way through life. At 30, we know it’s lingering, but it’s only around 11:00am in the day of our life. At 60, we know it’s dinner time, but there’s still so much to do before bed.
And I would surmise that even at the end, for most, there’s a feeling right up until they die that there is still a little bit of time left, another day, another hour, another minute to do something.
Five days after the supposed end of the world, I’ll turn 33. That’s my basketball jersey number from high school. And in high school, I thought about how both young and old that number sounded as an age. It was so far away – fifteen years! What would I do in fifteen years?
The question should have been, what will I do with fifteen years? Because the choice was entirely up to me.
It doesn’t necessarily matter how it was spent, just the fact it was spent. It’s gone and I can never get it back. Some years I don’t want back, they were perfect. Other years, I’d do over. Then I break it down further.
How about the months? The days? The hours? How about you? Care for any do-overs?
Well, too bad, you can’t have them. But that doesn’t mean you can’t change how you spend  the future.
We’re an extremely strange bunch. We spend minutes waiting, hours wasting, days gone, months pass and become years.
I’ve read the famous poem, The Dash. And I’ve read “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss. And I’ve certainly read many passages of the Bible. All evoke feeling, emotion and reaction. I’ve heard great motivational speakers and felt, well, motivated. And I have been depressed by watching friends, family and even myself waste precious time. That can be motivating too.
But watching others or listening to the success or problems of others doesn’t actually change me or you. We are the only ones who can do that ourselves.
All of it adds up to life. It’s unpredictable. We can never know what’s in store. Our faith can have us believe without question that there is a heaven without knowing what it is like. We don’t need to see a million dollars to know it’s real. We have faith that something either exists or it doesn’t. Likewise, the absence of faith can have believe that there is nothing after we’re gone.
One is comforting, the other, wildly depressing. But neither is known as pure fact and truth.
That, in essence is life. We either believe or we don’t. We either believe we can do better and become more, or we don’t. We either believe in heaven or we don’t. We mangle life with shades and gray and nuance, but really, it’s black and white.
Happiness is derived from a feeling of joy, not by an action. Nothing technically makes you happy – you feel that way. Watching a ballgame and going on a date with my wife elicit a feeling of happiness. In turn, nothing makes you sad – you feel that way. A sick child elicits a reaction of compassion and pain, which qualifies as sadness because it’s an emotion.
It’s all perspective and outlook. It’s how the death of a loved one is seen by some as a release to a greater place, should they be of a resounding faith and belief. To others, it’s the loss and how it impacts their life and the sadness by not being able to see, touch or be with them.
This difference in perspective is how Bo Jackson shrugged off his devastating hip injury and went on with life and found something else to do. The most remarkable and gifted athlete of perhaps all time, who could literally do almost anything, found something else to do in his early 30s. Because there was more to do.
The opposite perspective is how some people reach a point where ending their life is the only possible outcome: there’s nothing else to do.
So ask yourself how you feel about Dec. 21, 2012, if it were true. Or ask yourself what if your world ends in six months, six years or 66 years. The less time there is, the more we try to do. Why not the opposite? Why not with more time, don’t we resolve ourselves to do more?
Because there’s time, right? Except that we don’t know that as truth or fact. We’re assuming. And assumptions cannot be validated.
Whether or not you believe that on Friday, December 21, 2012 the world will end or not, ask yourself the question if you are ready.
I would venture to say 99.8 percent of us are not. And that’s because we aren’t wired that way.
For me, in a spiritual sense, I am ready, though not prepared – if that makes any sense. I am content with whatever my fate may be. But I’m not ready to go. I want to do more with my wife and children. I want more time with them – time that I already miss or waste, and time that I will miss in the future. I want to see more places. I want to do different things. I’m not even close to prepared for all that I want to do.
The thing is, I may never be. If my last breath occurs at 121 years old, I doubt I’d be ready. Because we make choices, forced or not, of how we will spend our time. There’s no multitasking life. We choose what we do with our time, our seconds, our minutes, our hours, our days, months and years.
There is a trade-off. For everything we do, there is something we did not. For whomever we marry or choose to be with, there are thousands of options we’re taking off the table. Those that are certain that they were destined to be with that person don’t even think about these other options. I believe, without question, my wife and I were meant for each other, therefore, there is nothing missed in all the other possibilities, because they weren’t possible to begin with.
It’s the classic “grass is greener” concept. For everything we choose to do, there are thousands of other possibilities.
Or are there? What if we’re meant to do exactly what we’re doing at any given moment? Kind of frees you up to enjoy and just simply be, doesn’t it?
Yet no matter what, life will end at some point, with us thinking we have another day, another hour, another minute to do something else.  
Are you ready? Better yet, will you ever be? Can you ever be ready for what you can’t really prepare for?
Forget Dec. 21, 2012, how about Dec. 23, 2021? Or June 18, 2034? What will we do with whatever we have left? Can we get it all done in time?
Probably not.
But we can damn sure try.
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American People., Democrats, faith, Politics, Republicans, United States

The Responsibility of Today



To what do we actually owe one another? To what do we owe the future? What is each person’s responsibility to each other? Is it financial? Is it goodwill? Is it a combination of the two?

Are we not a family, this nation? Something must elicit our national sense of duty and pride. Some sense of self-sacrifice, yet an individual responsibility to maintain our own identity, our own burdens.

Just as in a family, some things we share. Some things are mine, some are yours and some are ours. What we often disagree most about in this country is what you should share with me. The other side is always the one trying to take from you or not giving enough in return.

We’ve lost our ability to communicate. We’ve lost our ability to tell the truth and be honest.

Truth remains absent from our national vocabulary. Whether it is out of fear of truth getting out, telling it outright or the fear of what people will do with it, the truth is often hidden from the public eye.

While I am firmly on one side of the political spectrum and long ago made up my mind on which candidate I will cast a vote for, it is apparent that the interpretation of what is true and correct varies greatly across the political landscape.

For example, we cannot erase our national debt without both cutting spending and raising taxes. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Many corporate CEOs have come out recently to state the same thing. This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s an American issue.

This is not just a slogan or a tagline about making the nation better for our children and their children. This is becoming about survival. We cannot continue to loan money out to everyone under the sun, borrow money from China and overspend at home without the truth and reality that it will destroy us.

If the goal is to do what is right, then, as Mark Bertonlini of Aetna and the other aforementioned CEOs mentioned this week, any fiscal plans must include tax reform and limiting the growth of health-care spending.

But Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on anyone, while Democrats want to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and don’t want to raise taxes on just the middle class or limit the growth of federal health care spending.

Yet no one wants to discuss the silent truth that limiting all spending and increasing taxes across the board, or broadening the base, is the only way we can begin to address the debt crisis head on.

The simple truth is you cannot tax just the wealthiest two percent of Americans in order to eliminate our deficit. It is not just the wealthy and rich that will see their taxes increase, as there aren’t enough wealthy people to tax at a high enough rate.

Yet we hear no discussion about what this must mean to the middle class and their taxes. Why? Because it loses voters, of course. And this is the problem: no one is being honest about this crisis, especially not during an election. Frankly, it’s unpopular at any time to discuss raising taxes, most especially on the middle class.

We fail to see our own hypocrisy on this. As President Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

To put it bluntly, we’ve reached a point that even taxing all income classes won’t offset the spending.

If finances are tight at home, we don’t spend as much on eating dinner out at a restaurant, or trips to the zoo, or random toys for our children or on their Christmas presents. This is essentially a tax on them. Children are the middle class of the American family. Because leadership overspent, they must deal with the fallout.

It doesn’t mean its fair. But it doesn’t mean it’s not true, either.

What most parents don’t do in that situation is even after raising “taxes” on our children do we continue to spend what we always spent on our own non-essentials. Yet this is what our government will do. We’ll raise taxes on one class, or another, or all, then continue to spend, spend, spend beyond what we’re taking in.

Then again, with issues such as these and so many others, what do we really expect from our leaders? And what should we expect when we exhibit the same poor behavior ourselves, from lack of restraint to being close minded?

We lack the discipline and faith to accomplish our goals. We lack the fortitude to actually behave as we tell people we believe you should. In a way, we should stop blaming politicians and elected officials. They are simply mirroring how we act. They are us. And until we can change ourselves, we can never expect more from them.

Yet this topic is often too difficult or logical for many to have. Asking people to be reflective on their own thoughts and actions is a challenging proposition. Even now, those who read this will believe this is about others, not them. No, this is about you. It’s certainly about me and my own imperfections.

Judging others is easy; labeling people just as simple. Someone cuts you off in traffic, then by all means, give them the finger. How dare they infringe on you and where you are going. Speaking of traffic, is your work commute slow? Blame slow drivers and construction or the weather, because nothing on earth is more important than where you are going.

If your child is failing in school, it must be the teacher’s fault. Not getting that promotion at work, then you should certainly lash out at co-workers, cop an attitude and represent yourself poorly to prove a point.

We’re a critical bunch without ever critiquing ourselves. We’re defensive and protective of our individualities.

Everything is about us. How we are wronged, how we are affected and affected. The greater good only matters if we’re included in that greater good.

How can we expect more from others than we do from ourselves?

Far too often, we let the media dictate what we’re told. And what we hear is often the greatest distortion.

In the 24-7 news cycle and the era of sound bites, words and twisted and manipulated and misconstrued all for the sake of crafting a presentation of what the host or channel wants you to hear. We’re in a dangerous time with the medium of mass media. Straight journalism, reporting, is overwhelming marred and skewed by opinion disguised as fact.

It is a moral hazard to use and twist people’s words into your own, add in descriptive adjectives and repackage it for an impressionable audience. Yet this occurs every minute on MSNBC, FOX and CNN.

Men like Lincoln, Jefferson, and probably both Roosevelts would never be elected today. Lincoln would be called a flip-flopper, indecisive and an extremist.

But have you ever changed your stance? None of us can possibly say that on every topic and issue under the sun we’ve remained unchanged over time. New information and experiences exist. We get older. Our circumstances change. Our opinions are ever-forming and ever-changing – at least they should be.

A lighter example of this was when, as a sports writer, I routinely attacked Peyton Manning. I didn’t like his approach to his teammates, his famous Manning Face and his failure to lead his team in the playoffs to more wins or accept his share of the blame in losses.

Then, one year, he played a spectacular season with a badly injured knee. On top of that, he was humble; keeping stories about all the procedures he received on the knee out of the media. He owned his failures and shared credit. To this day, I don’t know if I was always wrong or if he ever changed or I did, but my opinion changed.

Basically, because life and events are evolving, so should be our opinions and our stances. However, our values and our faith should always remain. Faith is a funny thing, another difficult proposition to discuss. Faith is not religion. Religion is man’s creation, in all its interpretations and variety.

This is just my own understanding of faith. Most would argue faith is deeply connected to religion, and in many cases, I suppose this to be true. However, I have faith in my wife. It is a belief and a trust. I have faith in my children, my family and friends and even faith in some (but not all) of my abilities. I have faith in my favorite sports teams (doesn’t always work out so well).

Faith does not have to be the absence of logic; on the contrary, they can work hand-in-hand.

It is therefore that I would argue that this is not a call for blind faith or religious faith, but faith in each other. That we still have time to change, that we still have time for a grassroots effort of building back up the guiding principles we were founded upon.

We rebuild, we educate ourselves on what we do not know, we work together, and we put aside bitterness.

Politically, there are few who are not supportive of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. That’s our starting point. Socially, we begin to pull back the reins on the “me-first” attitude. That’s not your parking spot. Everyone else is trying to get to work, too.

It cannot be stressed enough that this begins with us. We are the people in “We The People.” We do not necessarily need to speak in a unified voice to be heard, but we must speak all the same. What is right and just never changes, it just wears different clothing. It’s permissible for us to debate, to stand up for what we believe, while also expressing openness for others to do the same.

The truth is, if we do not change our attitudes, our hearts and minds remain locked away and our resentment and anger builds. This will only lead to failure.

We are a nation divided, not only politically, but socially as well. This has been growing for some time. It is time move on from our division and seek solutions in the facts, in real truth and in moving away from the selfishness that has guided us as individuals for too long.

This is the responsibility of today and we cannot put it off until tomorrow.

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